1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image pickup apparatus having a holding mechanism for stably holding the image pickup apparatus main body when image pickup operation is performed using the image pickup apparatus such as a video camera.
2. Related Background Art
In image pickup operation, a conventional vertical video camera in which a display LCD monitor and power supply battery pack are vertically arranged on one side surface and a storage portion allowing loading/unloading an image pickup recording medium is arranged on the other side surface is stably held by placing four fingers from the forefinger to the little finger on the front surface of the video camera main body and the thumb on the rear surface from the recording medium storage portion side from which a pickup image is recorded, and thereby gripping the video camera main body from the front and back. At this time, a grip belt for assisting the holding of the video camera main body has one end fixed to the front or bottom surface of the camera main body and the other end fixed to an upper portion on the rear surface.
There is proposed a book-shaped (vertical) video camera of a tape cassette laterally-arranging type in which a tape cassette as a pickup image recording medium is extracted from the bottom surface side in order to obtain a low-profile camera main body.
In the conventional tape cassette laterally-arranging type, the bottom surface of the camera main body serves as a tape cassette extraction port, and the grip belt cannot be fixed to the bottom surface of the camera main body. Because of this, one end of the grip belt must be fixed to the front surface of the camera main body, and the other end must be fixed to the rear surface or a portion of the side surface near the rear surface. In this state, the back contact portion of the grip belt cannot reach the back of a hand, and supports the backs of fingers. The camera main body cannot be stably held in phototaking operation. To solve this, a structure in which the back contact portion is pivotal about the camera main body to stable hold the camera main body in phototaking operation has been proposed. As an example of the conventionally proposed pivotal back contact portion, the two ends of the grip belt are fixed to a camera main body gripped by the palm of the hand, and the entire housing is pivoted. In this case in order to stably hold the camera main body, the camera main body must be small enough to be easily gripped by the palm of the hand. When the camera main body incorporates a display LCD or battery, the interior of the pivot shaft of the housing must be electrically wired. This results in a complicated structure and a bulky camera main body. As another example, one end of the grip belt is completely fixed, and the other end is fixed to the camera main body via a part called a hand strap support which pivots and stands, thereby compensating for the storage of a grip portion for gripping the camera main body.
In this structure, when the hand strap support is attached to or near the front surface of the camera main body, the standing height of the hand strap support must be set very large in order to cover the back of the hand with the back contact portion of the grip belt. Since the standing portion of the hand strap support must be directly gripped at this time, forming the hand strap support into an easy-to-grip shape leads to a large-size hand strap support. Also, other problems such as a complicated structure are posed because the grip belt must be firmly fixed to the camera main body while the hand strap support stands. In the prior art, the two ends of the grip belt are fixed to the camera main body. When the cassette cover is to be opened, the cassette cover hits the grip belt and is difficult to open.
Since a pivot support member which pivotally supports the grip belt is arranged on the front side of the side surface of the camera apparatus main body near a phototaking optical system, the finger of the user readily interferes with the phototaking lens, degrading photography.